dlsiouxfan

I think these figures demonstrate that a Division I move by UND isn't the huge leap that many naysayers make it out to be. We would be competitive right away with division I mid- majors in women's basketball and would soon be in men's basketball. Football would be competive at the I-AA level immediately. We need to do this as soon as possible before NDSU gets too far ahead of us. The fact is if we continue to play with the UMC- Crookstons and UMary's of the world, while they're playing Montana it's only a matter of time before the casual ND sports fan starts placing the quality of their athletic program ahead of ours. As a former Sioux athlete who was a part of teams that routinely beat the Bison this thought truly bothers me. Moving up is in UND's best interest and if we continue to remain Division II we almost certainly will begin to sacrifice the success of our revenue sports (football, BB), so that our non- revenue ones can prosper against marginal competition.

Give Glas a break... the fall of the UND basketball program isn't all his fault. UND basketball will continue to struggle until UND makes the much- needed decision to go Division I. UND continuing to remain division II has made recruiting for Glas extremely difficult. When UND and NDSU are up for the same players in hoops NDSU, sadly, will almost always and this is starting to show on the court. The Division I tag is much more attractive to male athletes especially since unlike WBB it would be impossible to sell a potential recruit on the chance to win a national championship in basketball at UND. Before we start heaping blame on Glas let's instead starting looking at some of the circumstances that are making it extremely difficult for him to put a competitive team on the floor.

UND needs to go Division I and the sooner the better. The longer we wait we are hurting ourselves and our teams ability to be competitive when we do go. Football would be competitive right away if we go now but if we wait NDSU with increased scholarships will eventually overtake them in the talent department. This is no knock on the program or the coaching staff but the fact is for out of state kids the difference between full ride and a partial ride at two universities they no prior emotional attachment to makes a big difference. Plus restoring the rivalry and starting new ones (Montana, Montana State) will no doubt help attendance in all of the sports. The sport most hurt would be women's basketball because they would no longer be able to win national titles, but I think if given time and appropriate resources UND could be a highly competitive team. Another team that would most likely benefit immediately would be the men's basketball team, the division I label seems to mean a lot more to male athletes than female and UND being division II,in my opinion, is crippling our basketball recruiting efforts. Case in point look at the success level just a few years ago compared with today and recent recruiting classes have been rather lackluster. Other sports would do also do well swimming and diving almost compete exclusively at a division I level already and women's soccer would compete nationally as well. As for sports like volleyball and softball well we can just as easily be a bad division I team as we can be bad division II teams, we'll just be losing to more recognized teams. Come to think if I believe this last point must have been motivation for NDSU and SDSU's division I moves

I would have to say Travis Mertens of Devils Lake would be an excellent recruit that's if he decided if he wants to play basketball or football in college.

To clarify what I mean in my above post. I should say that ordinances like the one discussed above and how city officials talk of "selectively" enforcing it only further alienate students from the grand forks community. Selective enforcement of this ordinance would not be unlike the selective enforcement of the noise ordinance which unfairly targets students who are having small togethers as well as those who are having loud parties. It's ordinances like these that tell students that yes students are good enough to spend money in our stores and yes they're good enough to work for us but god forbid i ever have to live in the same neighborhood as one of them and heaven help us if anymore than two or three of them get together in the same place.

What the city of Grand Forks doesn't realize is that this ordinance will only make springfest worse. Instead of the students being contained within the park springfest will now be held at the numerous student residences around the park, leading to more and more students trespassing on personal property. If they really wanted to contain springfest the city would fence off the park, give out wristbands at the gate, and thus would be better able to police the crowd. For what it's worth it seems like recent city policy has taken on a decided anti-student agenda. The proposed restrictions on leases to three members as well as the city wide noise ordinance. Grand Forks needs to embrace the student population because it truly is the life blood of the community. Designing laws that target the student population will only hurt the city in the long run. GF would suffer greatly if UND became the suitcase college that it seems as if city administrators are longing for.